Values: Wealth, Power
Traits:
4 – Superior Genetics X 2
1 – Start with Republic
1 – +1 to Construction at start and 4% reduced cost to Construction
1 – Start with Pellet Fusion Core refined
Would also take an “Easily influenceable government” trait if it were available for 0, or with “Open” if it were available for -1.
Assumed techs:
Very large ship full of rich partying college students from the University of Maximegalon (name borrowed from Douglas Adams) (the ship is named Mary Jane of course). Superior Genetics x 2 comes from their families being rich enough to afford it. Cliché freak inter-stellar drive accident lands them very far from home and destroys a good chunk of the ship. Inter-planetary drives soon to fail, so the ship technicians (educated resourceful folk in contrast to most of the students) decide their only option is to crash-land on a nearby habitable planet.
Much of the rest of Mary Jane gets rendered useless at this point. Inertial dampeners survive and keep the passengers alive, computer system is still mostly accessible for the time being and holds a vast store of useful information, some back-up power cores (Pellet Fusion Cores) survive, food stores partially survive and are powered by the back-up power cores, and finally the local cell-phone or such network temporarily survives so the ~20 million passengers can communicate and organize themselves.
Technicians announce the situation, manage to keep panic levels workable (I assume 2X Superior Genetics would also help with the panic levels a bit). After a short while the students, being young, privileged, and in college, decide they want to form a democratic capitalistic utopia. The charismatic person who first got this suggestion started (Bob) instantly gets elected leader and he nominates some members of his fraternity (Delta Kappa Epsilon) to draft a constitution and some others for public office. Delta Kappa Epsilon members go on to dominate politics up to the present day.
Technicians remind students of the dire situation, Bob is level-headed enough to get right on their side. Technicians are promised honorary titles in the new government, Bob uses his charisma to get people to listen to technicians.
Slowly, people get organized and start building. The habitat sections of the ship are still intact, so housing is fine at first. The first priority is getting a modern farm up. Power comes from the surviving PFCs, knowledge comes from the computer system which is gradually degrading. The next priority is getting more fuel for the PFCs because reserves are running low. The simplest solution is to redirect part of the flow from a nearby river and set up some electrolysis. Hydrogen with very trace amounts of deuterium isn’t the best fuel, but it’s good enough.
My story has some more explanations and a couple of funny anecdotes here, but eventually they manage to get a self-sufficient city up. With proper maintenance impossible, the computer systems on the ship keep degrading. The technicians manage to copy a large amount of information before the system goes off-line, with much of the information being in the field of Construction.
They also make contact with the native inhabitants of the planet, a group of hiders that have de-evolved into a pre-industrial society and into light blue sclerae (idea taken from Dune, but also quite possible in reality from what I understand). The natives are mainly absorbed into the Maximegalonians; Superior Genetics X 2 ensures that inter-bred children have few native characteristics.
And now to the more current things. The current time is slightly more than 100 years after the initial crash.
Most people live in the main city, Hellon, and its suburbs, though other cities are starting to grow in size/prominence. Thus most of the population lives in the same region, with other regions having only small Maximegalonian presences. There are some small groups of unassimilated natives in the main region, though the larger ones live in the other regions.
Hellon is no longer situated near the ship, having moved to a more favorable location a long time ago. Mary Jane now lies half-buried and abandoned; there is a fence around it, but there’s little left to scavenge anyway. The computer system died a long time ago and no one knows if any information can still be recovered from it.
There are a few social classes entrenched into the system. The descendants of Delta Kappa Epsilon, as mentioned earlier, make up the vast majority of elected officials and are generally more wealthy than most. Any citizen can technically be voted into office, sure, but people have so far been content with letting the DKE handle the government; it’s easier to bribe a senator than to be elected one yourself, and there’s small campaign barriers (tax, education level) that serve to keep most crazies/idealists out.
The “technician” class, made up of the highly educated, has been traditionally respected and still is. “Technician in X” is an actual title, above the title of “Doctor of X”. It takes a lot of talent, time, dedication, and a fair amount of either money or luck to become a technician, so numbers are kept fairly low. Unlike in the DKE class, nepotism plays a very small role here. Once a person becomes a technician though, they are guaranteed large research funds and their opinions are highly valued. The technician class maintains a degree of organization and collaboration through conferences and correspondence, and is the source of many technological innovations.
At the lowest end are the natives. Though many were assimilated and other refused to join the Maximegalonian society, a few remain in Hellon. They generally represent the poorest of the poor. Any natives that manage to advance up into the middle class typically marry Maximegalonians, their children thus coming out Maximegalonian. These natives are typically also disenfranchised due to small voting barriers.
In-between are the rest of Maximegalonians. Most belong to what is typically referred to as the middle class. A few are as poor as the natives, a few are richer than the DKE. For the most part though, Maximegalonians mainly concern themselves with advancing through the social ranks by accumulating wealth and power.
As mentioned, there are also many natives who had refused to join the Maximegalonians, most of these living outside the main region. They have all become aggressive towards the idea of cohabitation with the Maximegalonians. The natives outside the main region are still open to trade and communication with the Maximegalonians, though they have little they can actually trade. The natives in the main region however violently resist any attempts at contact, and as such the government has not even bothered to sign protection treaties with them. Conflict between settlers and natives has thus been slowly increasing, though the technologically inferior natives have little chance of winning.
Technologically, the Maximegalonians have so far mainly been building on what they recovered from the computer systems of the Mary Jane. There has been no need for advanced weapons until about a decade ago, when the Maximegalonians re-established interplanetary travel, hence the lack of research in that field. Early on there was a strong emphasis on survival and rebuilding. Though that’s mostly petered out by now, the Maximegalonians remain advanced in Biotech and Construction. Recently the technician class redesigned the interstellar Burst Drive, and a bare-bones inter-stellar raft has been commissioned.
Over the last decade, New Maximegalon has built a tiny fleet of interplanetary fighters as a token defense against space pirates. As with nearly everything else on New Maximegalon, the fighters are powered by the refined Pellet Fusion Cores that were one of the few things recoverable from the Mary Jane. Speaking of the Mary Jane, there is hope among some that information can yet be recovered from its ruins, though the prospects seem slim.
Oh, and a large chunk of the Maximegalonians kind of worship a giant cargo bay full of alcohol that was lost during the inter-stellar drive accident.
